Social stratifications: the forms and functions of inequality

The fact that social inequality is found everywhere suggests that there are universal features in social structure that generate inequality. The matching fact that inequalities vary considerably in form, function, and scope from one society to another indicates that these features are not uniform, and that it is useful to think of human societies as arrayed on an imaginary continuum reaching from total equality to total inequality. This being the case, it is the responsibility of the social scientist to analyze the conditions under which various forms and amounts of social inequality arise and are sustained, and what are their consequences for the societies in which they operate. This book seeks to make a contribution to that task.

I have found it impossible, however, to proceed systematically with such an analysis without first dissecting a number of the leading concepts, such as "evaluation" and "reward," to see what elements have been brought together, perhaps unwisely, under these headings, and what theo retical gains might be achieved by considering these elements separately. So, too, I have found it impossible to account for variant forms of stratifi cation without first elaborating the traditional conception that holds that stratification results from the juncture of differentiation and evaluation. In fact, there are at least four major processes at work in the operation of any system of stratification differentiation, ranking, evaluation, and reward and these must be treated as separate processes if the divergent and often apparently anomalous features of various concrete societies are to be understood.

When the phenomenon of inequality is thus re-conceptualized, and seen in its fuller complexity, a number of research findings that have proven confusing the great variability in the outcomes of studies of status crystallization, for instance-can be managed more adequately. Limita. tions of space have forbidden the kind of development of these new lines of theory and research that would have been desirable. But I have tried to suggest some of the directions in which ich future research and theory probably ought to go.

The restrictions of space also have made it impossible to deal with the great amount of research materials in more than a passing and illus trative fashion. At the same time, the comparative materials-historical and contemporaneous-have been kept in mind at all times as concepts and generalizations were developed, so that, though many of the illus trative allusions are drawn from studies of American society, the fitness of the generalizations for the range of known societies has been a paramount consideration.